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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28655019">night sky with exit wounds</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterichara/pseuds/asterichara'>asterichara</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SEVENTEEN (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hitchhiking, Homelessness, Inspired by Poetry, Josh Throws Books Away, M/M, Natural Disasters, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot With Porn, Road Trips, Strangers to Lovers, Trans Male Character, Work In Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:16:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,126</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28655019</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterichara/pseuds/asterichara</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The landscape crossed out with a pen<br/>reappears here<br/>- Bei Dao</i>
</p><p>joshua has a lot of opinions about fire, and he goes on a road trip with no destination in search of a sky without smoke. along the way, he meets a man from a city that’s drowning and finds himself asking if when that man fled the city flooding, he did not bring with him the river running in his heart.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Lee Jihoon | Woozi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Seventeen Rare Pair Fest: 2 Rare 2 Pair</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>night sky with exit wounds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">



        <li>In response to a prompt by
            Anonymous in the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SVTRarePairFest2">SVTRarePairFest2</a>
          collection.
        </li>
    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><strong>Prompt:</strong><br/>  <strong>"...teach me how to hold a man the way thirst<br/>holds water. Let every river envy<br/>our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body<br/>like a season..."<br/>-A Little Closer to the Edge, Ocean Vuong</strong></p><p>  <strong>+strangers to desperate, all-consuming lovers<br/>+exploring codependency and trauma after climate disaster<br/>+any pairing any rating any tags</strong></p><p> </p><p>hey, to whoever submitted this prompt!! i hope this work is to your liking and that it makes you smile at least a little.</p><p>i ran a little wild with it and created a whole au that takes place in the united states, so this will be a lengthy series, i hope. i’m working on a map of their journeys, since not everyone lives in america and it helps to have a visual aid, but until author reveals and the release of chapter 2, you won’t get to see this map haha. thanks for reading! please leave me a comment if you can, and i look forward to seeing you back here again.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div>
  <p>“...O minute hand, teach me<br/>
how to hold a man the way thirst</p>
  <p>hold water. Let every river envy<br/>
our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body<br/>
like a season. Where apples thunder</p>
  <p>the earth with red hooves…”<br/>
-A Little Closer to the Edge, Ocean Vuong</p>
</div><p>Fire does not care who its mother is, Joshua thinks. His house is just a blackened skeleton now, carpeted by fresh ashes and heat, and he stands on the scorched concrete and stares. Since fire has no mother, it can’t care about how all that is now left of Joshua’s life is packed into and simultaneously composed entirely of the Jetta parked by the soot-black curb with the hazard lights on. He has some clothes, rolled up tight and held with rubber bands, crowding his passenger’s seat and offering a soft resting place and impromptu hiding place for his laptop and a few other electronics. There are books haphazardly spilling out of boxes in the backseat, next to an aloe vera plant that he couldn’t bear to leave behind and picked off the porch on his way out the door to evacuate… but the rest of it, anything that Joshua couldn’t cram into his Volkswagen in the day before evacuation, went into the fire.

</p><p>He knows he shouldn’t have come back. It’s not necessarily safe now, even though the flames are put out, but he’d been so optimistic about possibly returning to his home that he’d taken the chance. This is the third fire he’s had to evacuate from; at this point, he should have known better and expected, with the way that the wildfires keep encroaching closer and closer each season, that there wasn’t actually any way he’d ever be able to come <i>home</i> again.</p><p>His mouth tastes sour, like burning, and he watches one of the blackened posts slowly bend until it finally breaks apart, splintering and sending out bits of wood and ash into the air. The roof sags dangerously, dropping shingles into the driveway, and a wall creaks. This shit is coming down sooner rather than later, and the only thing he can think is that this <i>fucking sucks.</i></p><p>Joshua can only stare, stood there in the smoky air breathing it all in, carving the memory of this representation of who he was all destroyed into his lungs. His brain’s no good, because it’ll file it away, but Joshua knows that, for the rest of his life, this loss will weigh like stone in his chest. So he lets it take root there, spreading the ash of memory over what’s probably his guts, and he considers briefly if he might become a tree on the property and burn away with it next season when the fires come again.</p><p>He zones out staring for long enough that people notice. A firefighter approaches him, watching him stand there, and she says to him, “I”m sorry about this loss. It must be really hard to have lost your place. Do you have alternate accommodations? If not, I can get you to the station for a hotel voucher for a few days.” She glances at his feet, planted firmly on the sidewalk right before the dead grass that made up what used to be the lawn starts. The grass is thick with soot and his shoes, scuffed white Converse, don’t dare to tread beyond the concrete line that divides him from the collapsing frame of his burned-out heart.</p><p>Joshua offers a thin smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He is grateful, of course, but he’s not in need of help, not really. He just needs a little while to take things in. “I’m fine, I’ve been staying in a hotel down about 40 miles south of here that my friend helped me book a room in. I’m working on getting a more permanent place, though, given the fact that…”</p><p>They both look at the skeleton of his home. A tear rolls down Joshua’s cheek, and then the firefighter nods and says, “If you’re in need of anything, just contact us by phone or email and we’ll get you taken care of as best we can. You have the department’s info, right?”</p><p>“Yeah, I got it,” Joshua says, voice breaking. “I have everything I need.”</p><p>More tears, now, and then Joshua has to force himself to stop looking at the ashes and charred wood that used to be a place where he felt love before he has a breakdown where someone else can see him. As he turns away, he could swear for a moment as he takes a last look at the house that a stray curl of acrid smoke rising off what’s left... is the fire’s ghost smirking at him somehow.</p><p>He gets in the car and grits his teeth, waiting until the firefighter’s return to her team at the fire engine before he slams his fists on the steering wheel and screams his grief alone to his last worldly possessions.</p><p>They say nothing back.</p><p>-</p><p>When his insurance agent gets back to him, Joshua is at least a little soothed by the fact that his home insurance covered fire, especially after the monthly charges had gotten so steep with the increasing risk of fire damage each year. Since the house is a total loss, though, he doesn’t want to bother throwing all the money they’re going to pay out (minus the deductible and some fees or whatever) into it to rebuild it from scratch. Not if it’s just going to burn again. There’s no way it won’t do so again - he has no faith in nature, in her wind and rain, or in men, in their firebreaks and rolling blackouts. He gets rid of the property in under a month, some type of short sale, and gets some extra cash, which he dumps into savings before getting out of the hotel he’s been living out of for too long and into a new apartment. He has $250,000 available to him, but he decides that living in a small place is easier than trying to bother with another house in a safer area.</p><p>The newness never really works itself out. By the time Joshua has been living in the new complex for five months, he’s still getting lost, still parking in the wrong parking space (he’s been towed twice by now), and still forgetting where things go in his own place. He chalks it up to the sense of loss, and he gazes out the dining room window, down toward the common recreation area all the apartment buildings are built around. It’s empty down there, except for the green treetops swaying in the wind, and Joshua stares, trying so hard to keep himself from crying once again over the burned out shell of a house stripped of everything that ever made it home.</p><p>There was something about that house that made Joshua’s heart ache. Its loss was like losing a friend, after all, because that had been his mom and dad’s house, the one he’d been brought up in until they’d divorced and he’d moved with his mom down by the Staples Center; he’d worked so hard to buy it back after university only to lose it to a force with no sense of how unfair its actions were. It’s hard to hate an abstract concept, but Joshua manages, and he manages it to such a degree that he has an electric range just so he never has to see a flame in his house. He has a feeling he’d have a panic attack.</p><p>Outside, there is quiet. Only the wind stirs the trees as Joshua sits on the windowsill and gazes toward the calm pond next to the small play area for the complex’s children. He sometimes dreams about drowning in it. He has dreams of dying there, entombed in water, as a last sort of ‘fuck you’ to the idea of dying by fire, but he always shakes them off and takes the long way around the buildings. He only ever sees that pond from the windows anymore, because there’s something inside Josh that’s afraid that he’s been losing control all along.</p><p>He can see the horizon from here, a bitter orange glow upon it, and as he glances up at the sky, smoky and threatening as a result of a fire that’s been burning for months, he can’t help but nervously lick his lips. Fire still looms in the distance, and nowhere is really safe anymore. Though the fire had been put out by his old place, it had come back with a vengeance, tearing through again and destroying anything it had left behind the first time. By the time he’d sold, the fires were closing in, and when the money hit the bank, his childhood happy place was ash and dust. It’s overwhelming to think about, and puts an uncomfortable tightness in his throat. He swallows thickly, and, nervously, he turns away from the window.</p><p>He drinks a bottle of wine alone, and then he lays down in bed, blasts the air conditioner, and pulls the covers all the way up over his head.</p><p>Sleep does not come easily, but when it does overtake him, he burns.</p><p>The pain that bites at every part of his skin draws out tears that turn to steam the moment they leave his eyes, and as the fire increases and brings him to his knees, he tries to cry out. He can’t find a breath that doesn’t have a blazing kiss to it, that doesn’t send tongues of flame into his mouth and smoke into his lungs, so he just screams, knelt on the ground as he loses himself to the inferno.</p><p>The pain abruptly subsides, leaving only the ghost of its memory tearing through his skin. The flames do not subside, however, and as he raises his hand to his face, it crumbles to ashes.</p><p>He doesn’t even have time to panic before he starts to fall apart, and then Joshua is sitting bolt upright in his bed, gasping for air and clutching at his chest.</p><p>The clock on the wall, one of those word clocks, tells him in glowing white letters that <i>IT IS HALF PAST FOUR IN THE MORNING.</i> Glancing out the window as he feels over his bare body with his fingers, he sees the distressing glow of flames illuminating the horizon still. He could probably believe they’ve come nearer, but he’s not sure and he’s not about to drive up to the mountains to find out. He flops back into his pillows and untangles himself from the sheets, throwing them off and trying to keep calm.</p><p>He lays there naked, gazing up at the barely lit ceiling, drifting mentally as far away from fire in his thoughts as he can. He thinks of coffee and breakfast, and he thinks of a nice bath. He thinks about his friends, and then he thinks about the people he’s seen out there in the street while on his way to places. He thinks about work, a shitty accounting job that pays well but sucked the life out of him a long time ago, and how he’d rather just never fucking go back so he never has to leave his house again, and he groans, reaching up with his arms and arching up to stretch his back with a satisfying popping sound.</p><p>He doesn’t manage to sleep by the time the sun comes most of the way up. It’s red and eerie because of the way the smoke distorts the dawn, so he closes the blinds and looks at the box under the window. There are a few books still in there, ones he’d never taken to the shelf, and he bends down to take one and hold it. It’s an old piece of shit, a paperback copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s <i>The Power of Positive Thinking</i>, with the spine cracked to fuck from where he’d read it over and over during freshman year of university, and now all he can do is roll his eyes. He can’t remember much from it, but what he can remember is about as useful to him now as a switch with no bulb. Joshua shakes his head ruefully, and then drops the book into his trash can.</p><p>Looking back at out the window as the book thuds, Josh smiles, a strange little mirthless thing, and he thinks that positivity isn’t what matters anymore. Not on days like these.</p><p>He sets his hands on the windowsill, and cranes his neck to look down at the parking lot. There’s his Jetta, lit in a borderline demonic dawn that glints threateningly off its sleek black paint job.</p><p>Joshua takes that threat seriously, and when he turns back to the bedroom, it’s with a sense of finality.</p><p>“I guess this is goodbye.”</p><p>-</p><p>Joshua has to pay $400 to cancel his lease, but that’s fine; he more than makes it back selling off his furniture to his neighbors in the apartment building. He strips the apartment bare in a matter of days, throwing out everything that’s not strictly necessary and didn’t sell, and he quits his job on short notice overnight. He cites an emergency in the family and that he has to leave the area and won’t be coming back for the near future. In less than six months since the first time, Joshua is back on the road, with the majority of his life in the car, going 15 miles over the speed limit on the Interstate to get the fuck out of town. Behind him, smoke continues to spill into the sky, and as he peers at it in the rearview mirror, he feels a nervous tic in his jaw. He can’t just stay and deal with the trauma of more fire, or more loss, so he goes. He doesn’t really have much of a destination in mind; all he has is the nebulous concept of east, and that’s enough to get him on the road.</p><p>He figures it’s better to have nothing now and start somewhere he won’t lose it all, and with Alesana on the speakers, he blazes his way out of California up I-15 and races into Clark County on a single tank of gas. He’s just north of Primm, Nevada when the car starts to run low gas, a solid 5 hours into driving to <i>fucking anywhere</i> that’s not where he’s from, so he decides it’s best to make a stop in Las Vegas to get some gas and probably some food before he hits Utah. Utah’s an ugly little thing, hot and dry and desperately empty for hours at a time, so he figures he might as well take in the Vegas lights to pick up his mood a bit and shoot off that desert misery he’s been taking in this whole way so far in the Mojave.</p><p>It’s December, close to Christmas, so there’s not as much of a crowd in the area and Joshua’s easily able to find a gas station and a tea shop on Spring Mountain Road. He fills up his tank and gets a drink at the shop, and he’s just planning to get in his car and go when he sees someone standing on the sidewalk with headphones on and a cardboard sign. He has his thumb out and his back’s to Joshua, but he’s got a big black case at his feet and a hiking backpack on his back.</p><p>Skirting around him to get to the car, Joshua turns back to see the sign, which reads “I-40 (Santa Fe)”.</p><p>Ah, a hitchhiker.</p><p>Josh thinks for a moment, asks himself if this is a good or safe or even sane idea, then gets in his car and consults the car’s GPS. It tells him that if he goes south down Interstate 11, he can take Interstate 40 and get this guy to Santa Fe before he himself heads off anywhere the wind blows. Sighing, he moves the things in the passenger’s seat to the floor of the backseat. By his reckoning, he can get his passenger to put his case in the trunk and they can get on their way.</p><p>He gets back out of the car and leans on the open door and calls out, “Hey, man, you need a ride? I can get you to Santa Fe! I’m heading down that way.”</p><p>The guy lights up, putting down his sign, and he says, in English with an accent that Joshua can’t place, “Yeah, I need one. But I need to take this with me.” He indicates his case, and Joshua nods and points over his shoulder.</p><p>“It should fit in the trunk. I’ll open it for you.”</p><p>Josh gets back in the car and pops the trunk; the other man pops open his case to reveal a nice keyboard. It looks expensive, though he can’t make out the brand, and then he slips the cardboard sign into one of the inner pockets, presumably to reuse it later. He clicks it shut, and then hefts it into Joshua’s open trunk with ease. When he’s shut the trunk, he gets in. While he gets his seat belt on, Josh backs out of the parking spot and exits the plaza, setting the GPS to take him to Santa Fe.</p><p>“Thanks a lot for the ride, really. What’s your name?”</p><p>“Joshua. Joshua Hong.”</p><p>“I’m Jihoon,” the shorter of the two says, situating his backpack at his feet and taking off his baseball cap to reveal silver hair buzzed short. “Jihoon Lee.”</p><p>Joshua nods, and says, “I don’t mean to be rude while we’re chatting, if it seems like I’m a little short with you, but I’ve just got to get us on the 40 before night hits. I’m not a fan of night driving and I’d rather use this time to get us through the desert, which doesn’t have a lot of lights or people.”</p><p>Jihoon seems a little surprised by that, and he says, “There’s more desert on the way to Santa Fe? It feels like there shouldn’t be more once you pass Las Vegas. I just came from Oregon through California and it feels weird to see all this empty space with not even trees.” That gets a laugh out of Josh, who responds, “I mean, there are four major deserts that have some land in the US. I really hate the desert, since it’s really boring, and it’s easy to get a little mindless out there, so. Once you’re past Santa Fe and heading into Texas, though, I hear it’s not so dry, but it becomes mostly farms and cemeteries and shit.”</p><p>“Oh,” Jihoon says quietly. He muses on something in silence and relaxes in his seat as Joshua takes the entrance ramp onto Interstate 11, and it’s a while before he says anything again. They’re just past Hoover Dam, where neither really cared to stop to look at the marvel of engineering, when Jihoon speaks again, this time in Korean.</p><p>It sparks something in Joshua’s brain to hear the language of his parents, and he has to swallow back the lump in his throat that threatens to make him cry with how hard that pang of nostalgia went through him.</p><p>“I don’t know how the fuck we got to this point, as a world.”</p><p>Joshua licks his lips and responds in kind, “I understand. I don’t know either.”</p><p>Jihoon looks at him in the late afternoon light, and Joshua gives him a short glance as he drives, hands flexing on the steering wheel. There’s a strange fire in Jihoon’s eyes, a glint that Joshua wants to chalk up to the smoke-dirty sunset behind them even if he knows he can’t, and it unnerves him so much that he snaps his eyes back to the road.</p><p>Jihoon’s voice is soft, prying, like a knife against his sternum, and so he finds himself splitting like an apple when the silver-haired man says, “I thought you were going to Santa Fe.”</p><p>“I’m going anywhere I can go away from California,” Joshua admits. “If that means Santa Fe, great. If it means New Orleans, Miami, Atlanta, New York… I’ll take it.”</p><p>There is quiet again, and Jihoon murmurs, “There’s not a lot left to live for in Miami. You heard the water’s rising?”</p><p>Joshua falters. He hasn’t kept up much on other places since the fire that ate his house, and he says, “I’ve had some, ah. Problems. I don’t read much news anymore. I came from California so it’s all fires everywhere there.”</p><p>Jihoon nods, and then he replies, “I get it. Same problem. I moved here from Korea for college, and then, um. Well, my home back there got flooded and my parents moved in with my grandparents. I did some paperwork and now I can stay here legally as a result, but I don’t have a lot of work because who needs a musician when the city’s going under? Ha! The last earthquake off the coast did some damage to the wall keeping the river from flooding, and by the time I hitched out of there, we were wading through like, three inches of water to get anywhere in the city at all. I’m trying to make it to my friend’s apartment in the east, ultimately, but Santa Fe’s not horribly far. I thought it’d be best to start small, because I lucked the fuck out getting a ride all the way from Portland into Vegas as it is.”</p><p>Joshua is silent for a moment, and he watches the road as an Arizona Highway Patrol car speeds past them. He glances at the speedometer, just to make sure he’s not about to get his shit pulled over, and returns his eyes to the desert ahead once he’s more at ease about it.</p><p>“I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” Josh says, quietly, as if it’s a secret, and Jihoon responds, volume just as low, “Then it’s just you and me, all the way to New York.”</p><p>His hand finds Joshua’s, sending heat through the brunet’s skin as he feels Jihoon’s pinky interlock with his.</p><p>It’s a promise, then. A promise made for however long it takes to get to New York, sworn on asphalt, in the sun, and with the taste of Kung Fu Tea.</p><p>-</p><p>It’s whatever the fuck hour of the night when they finally make it to the outskirts of Santa Fe. Jihoon’s idea is they should get a motel room out here, somewhere to sleep that isn’t the Jetta, and Joshua readily agrees. It’s quick work and a swipe of Joshua’s credit card to book the place (because of course the damn place won’t take debit), and then they’re in the room with a backpack each. Joshua offers him the bathroom first, which Jihoon gladly takes.</p><p>He sings in the shower, Josh discovers, and he sings really well. The sound of Jihoon’s song, a Korean piece he’s never heard before, keeps Joshua company as he pulls Doordash up on his phone. They’d talked about what was for dinner in the car, and Jihoon had given Joshua $10 and asked him to order dinner for him. So he does, sending off an order to a local restaurant and waiting for it. There’s only one bed in the room, because it’s all the motel’s got, but Joshua doesn’t mind. Jihoon’s nice, or at least seems nice at this point.</p><p>The shower stops, and then the sink runs. Joshua isn’t sure about the passage of time, but the food comes, so he opens up the door, takes the food, and tips the worker Jihoon’s $10. There’s a table that doesn’t look too rickety next to the small TV that’s hung up on the wall, so he sets the bags there. As he’s checking on whose food is whose, Jihoon comes out, his torso wrapped in a towel, and he nods his head at Joshua.</p><p>“Sorry that that took a bit,” Jihoon says, and Joshua scoops his pajamas off the bed once he’s figured out whose meal is whose.</p><p>“It’s no problem. If you’ve been hitching a while, a nice shower probably wasn’t something you definitely had on the cards. While we’re going together, you can shower as much as you’d like to, and as long as you want.” Josh says, shrugging. “‘Cause I know what it’s like to lose your place to live. Mine burned down a few months back and I lived out of a hotel for a bit. You getting drowned out of Portland isn’t so different.”</p><p>“You’re kind. I’ll wait for you to eat, Joshua. If that’s okay.” Jihoon murmurs, hand still tight on his towel knot at his sternum. Joshua feels his mouth go dry when Jihoon meets his eyes. It’s the first time that they really get to look at each other, and it sort of shakes through him. The silver-haired man has deep brown eyes, and smooth monolids, like God took his time on Jihoon and made the effort to carefully mold his face. His jaw is well-formed, and the low corners of his eyes top it off with an air of calculated innocence.</p><p>He seems sweet, but when he smiles at Joshua, it comes off as a playful baring of teeth and makes the brunet stammer out, “Y-yeah, that’s fine. I’ll hurry up so it won’t get cold.”</p><p>The shower’s a welcome luxury. The water is warm and soothing on Joshua’s tight back muscles and sore arms, and he instinctively reaches down to play with himself before he remembers that he’s not quite alone enough to jerk off and not be heard. So he leaves that be and gets through his business as fast as he can otherwise.</p><p>When Joshua comes out, Jihoon is dressed, sat on the bed in some basketball shorts and an oversized Adidas t-shirt. Josh himself has on pajamas, just some long pants and a short-sleeve shirt. He’s not used to sleeping with clothes on, but he figures it’s the simplest courtesy he can afford Jihoon as they both flee disaster. With the TV on in the background, they put on some ABC show neither of them is actually watching and get to eating. The food is still warm, and they eat in a calm silence. The tortillas are scratch made, and Joshua genuinely wonders how he’ll ever eat Taco Bell again after this.</p><p>He chases a bit of sauce threatening to drip off his hand onto his clothes with the tip of his tongue, and when he glances up, Jihoon is staring. Josh can feel his ears get hot, and Jihoon seems to be in the same state. His ears redden, and both of them duck their heads down and keep eating in silence. Joshua’s not sure what that was, but it sure was powerful and it made him feel like a deer in headlights.</p><p>After the food’s done, they both spend some time doing little things here and there. Jihoon sits at the edge of the bed with a notebook and his headphones in, jotting things down here and there as he nods his head to a beat Joshua can’t hear. Joshua busies himself doing some light reading, just skimming one of the books he’d shoved in his car. It’s another book full of shit, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and he can’t help but scoff a little at its ‘think your problems away!’ approach. On his way to lock the deadbolt as the night reaches the right time to sleep, he yawns and drops the book in the trash. He locks the door and beeps his car again to make sure it’s locked properly, then he settles on his side of the bed. Jihoon stays where he is, content to keep working on whatever it is he’s doing, and so Josh doesn’t press him. He pulls the blanket over himself and settles his head on the pillow to sleep. Another yawn and a few tired blinks, then Josh’s eyes drift slowly shut and he’s out like a light.</p><p>The sleep is shaky and rife with nightmares that lick like flames along his subconscious. If asked, he’d admit he only remembers these in flashes, and yet they scare him raw and deeply. When Joshua comes to, startled out of another nightmare where his skin is melting, Jihoon is still at the edge of the bed, scribbling furiously into his notebook by the dim light of the motel’s lamp. The scribbling falters as Joshua sits up, because the bed’s shit quality and his movements disturb Jihoon. The silver-haired man looks over his shoulder, and Joshua feels himself come to pieces as if Jihoon pulled the thin, single thread holding him together out in one smooth motion. When Jihoon’s lips part, Joshua can practically picture the shimmering thread of his self control caught between his teeth, and they stare at each other in silence for far too long.</p><p>The notebook is shut and tossed onto the floor beside Jihoon’s gray backpack, and then Jihoon stands, setting his phone down on top of the notebook.</p><p>The clock says it’s 3:45 AM.</p><p>Jihoon’s eyes as he comes to the bed say that he doesn’t give a fuck what time it is.</p><p>Joshua is terrified this is a dream, because Jihoon slides under the blanket and lays down, unreadable eyes gazing up at him, and says, “Something’s happening, Joshua.”</p><p>“What’s happening?”</p><p>“Promise me you’ll still let me ride with you if I tell you this.”</p><p>Joshua’s blood freezes, like it’s been supercooled and he’s been struck in the face. He nods wordlessly, and Jihoon’s hand finds his atop the blanket and curls their pinkies together. Another promise. Another binding to lash them together. The threat of a rolling eternity.</p><p>“I’ve known you for a day, Joshua, if that.” Jihoon whispers. “But I… I’m in l-“</p><p>“Don’t.” Joshua says softly, voice cracking on it like the word’s the hardest thing he’s ever said. He turns to where Jihoon is laying, and with their pinkies still linked, he leans down and searches Jihoon’s eyes. There is sincerity there, chased by the ghost of fear, and Joshua has a feeling that he reflects much the same emotions.</p><p>Jihoon lifts his head as Joshua leans down, and their foreheads touch before their lips do.</p><p>“This time,” Joshua breathes, an inch from Jihoon’s mouth, “promise me. Promise me you won’t say it until you mean it.”</p><p>Jihoon puts his hand on the back of Joshua’s neck and presses their lips together.</p><p>A third promise, and the sensation of drowning against Jihoon’s tongue, the kiss sweetened with a secret that only the two of them have.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks for reading! let me know what you thought?</p></blockquote></div></div>
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